Judas island - kathryn r. wall

#4 in the Bay Tanner Mystery Series From the depths of a forgotten grave rise the echoes of a deadly conspiracy .

When widowed financial consultant and sometime detective Bay Tanner flees Paris and the collapse of her short-lived affair with Interpol agent Alain Darnay, she finds herself drawn into yet another of the dark mysteries that seem to swirl around her fathers antebellum mansion in Beaufort, South Carolina.

No sooner has she unloaded her bags than she senses trouble between retired Judge Talbot Simpson and his longtime housekeeper/companion, Lavinia Smalls.

What--or who--has driven a wedge between these two people who have been the bedrock of Bays existence since her childhood? And why wont either of them talk about it? Then a phone call from her partner-in-crime-solving, Erik Whiteside, sets in motion a chain of events that will ultimately expose the dark underbelly of the aristocratic local society in which she grew up.

Eriks old college drinking buddy, archaeologist Gray Palmer, has uncovered a grave on an obscure island just off the South Carolina coast and hints the bones may be those of a murder victim.

But before Bay and Erik can learn the details, Palmer turns up dead himself and in a particularly gruesome way.

Spurred on by Grays exotic girlfriend and his estranged fathers offer of a sizeable reward, they methodically peel back the layers of deceit and cover-up carefully constructed over decades by those who have everything to lose if the grave injustices of Judas Island are ever brought to light.

Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, and Marcia Muller come to mind as the quintessential writers of the modern female private eye novel.

Wall, in a quiet and unassuming way, has produced a body of work of equal quality.

Highly recommended.

--Library Journal.